PlayStation 4 price going up by $50 in Canada

The price of Sony Corp’s newly released PlayStation 4 game console will be going up by $50 in Canada, the company has confirmed, raising the price from $399 to $449. The price jump will take effect on Saturday March 15.

The console — released last November with a price-tag on par with the one in the United States — isn’t the only piece of Sony hardware getting a bump. The Dualshock 4 controller and PlayStation Camera are both going up from $59.99 to $64.99. As well, the prices of two upcoming first-party games — MLB The Show ’14 and inFAMOUS: Second Son — will retail for $69.99, which is ten dollars higher than the U.S. price.

“The PlayStation 4 computer entertainment system delivers phenomenal play experiences that will shape the world of games for years to come and has quickly become the next gen console of choice with gamers in Canada,” Sony said in a statement. “To respond to changes in the market environment, the price of PlayStation 4 will be revised from CAD $399.99 to $449.99 MSRP.”

Sony did not specifically say that the increase was related to the Canadian dollar, but a low dollar is obviously a “change in the market environment.”

Last month there was a similar price increase on the games for the rival Xbox One, moving from $59.99 to $64.99. That said, a representative at Microsoft said there are currently no planned announcements for a similar price increase on the Xbox One console itself, which is now set at $499.99.

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“As with many products, pricing and offers vary from country to country,” Microsoft said in a statement. “We’re committed to providing the best value to all our customers and have nothing further to announce at this time.”

Video-game prices being higher in Canada is nothing new; in fact, higher prices were the norm until around 2008 when listings started matching the United States on the back of the strong dollar. In the mid 90s, when most games were sold on expensive cartridges, it was not unheard of for new games on large carts (such as Square Soft’s Chrono Trigger) to sell for over a hundred dollars.

Sony may be feeling the freedom to raise the Canadian price on the PS4 due to how well it’s selling.

The PS4 held the lead in U.S. video-game unit sales in February, while the higher-priced Xbox One generated more revenue, researcher NPD Group said.

Spending on video-game hardware increased 42% to $347-million from a year earlier, as players continued to snap up the machines, Port Washington, New York-based NPD said Thursday.

“PS4 led hardware sales in February 2014, but by a narrow margin with Xbox One selling over 90% of what the PS4 sold in terms of unit sales,” said Liam Callahan, an NPD analyst. “With Xbox One’s higher price point it led hardware sales on a dollar basis.”

The results point to tight competition between the consoles as Microsoft and Sony, with their first consoles in seven years, battle each other and a shift toward social and mobile games. Xbox said it could get a boost this month from Titanfall, an Electronic Arts Inc. shooter that began shipping exclusively on Microsoft consoles this week.

There are still anecdotal reports that the PS4 hardware is supply constrained compared to the Xbox. Sony has launched in more territories than Microsoft, and has just launched in Japan.

Microsoft sold 258,000 Xbox Ones during the month and 114,000 older Xbox 360s, the Redmond, Washington-based company said.

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